Chilean Sea Bass

It was December of 2006 and Jim was driving to Austin from Houston to visit me. I wanted to cook a meal for him that would knock his socks off so I consulted with a client of mine who loves to cook. She suggested I try Chilean Sea Bass and I was terrified of this daunting recipe. I shared our dinner plans with Jim and he said that Sea Bass was his favorite. If I wasn’t nervous before, this made things even worse. Lucky, I got really great instructions from my client and the dish turned out GREAT. I don’t know if Jim stuck around for me or for my cooking. He says this remains one of his top five favorite dinners I have served. Here is what you need for the marinade:

Soy sauce, garlic, chopped jalapenos and the secret ingredient…brown sugar. The brown sugar is what gives the fish the caramelized crust that taste so delish.

I put all this in a small Tupperware and let the fish marinade for a few hours in the fridge.

Preheat oven to 400. Put one part sesame oil 3 parts vegetable oil in a pan. Swirl around and make sure the pain is just coated with a thin layer of oil. Preheat the pan until you can tell it is really HOT! Smoke is fine - only a little. Put fish in pan.

The hardest part for me is to leave it in the pan and do not touch for at least three minutes. You think its burning, you think this expensive piece of fish you just purchased is ruined….it’s not, trust me.

Just walk away and pick out a nice white wine to drink with your sea bass. I chose a crisp Sav Blanc from Trentadue. After three minutes, grab your spatula and really get underneath the fish and flip it over. Immediately place your pan in the oven for about 7-10 minutes. Depending on how well done you like it.

A great way to serve this is on a bed of sautéed spinach. I didn’t have any, so I just ate this petite portion of VERY flavorful sea bass. The brown sugar and soy gave this fish a very crisp crust but the inside of this is completely flaky and buttery. DELISH!